honoring our ancestors through handwoven jacquard portraits

About the Project

In the Ancestral Women Exhibit, award-winning jacquard weaver Mary Burnshonors women’s journeys by creating their portraits in jacquard weavings. The Ancestral Women project was conceived to portray the strength of ancestral women around the world, both elders and their contemporaries, and to honor their journeys. The first phase of this larger project features women elders from each of Wisconsin’s 12 Native American tribes, 11 of which are federally recognized, and one, the Brothertown Nation, which is seeking federal status. Mary is also weaving six clan pieces for the exhibit (bear, loon, eagle, marten, crane, turtle) and four landscape pieces that illustrate essential cultural practices (maple sugaring, harvesting wild rice, building a birch bark canoe, and a piece showing a rising sun over a lake that symbolizes a new day).

The exhibit first opened to the public in Wausau at the Center for Visual Arts on 9/23/17, and again opened on 6/7/17 at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland, WI, where it will be until 10/1/17. Two programs will be presented during the summer of 2017: one on June 20 with Tinker Schuman and Mary Burns, and the second on July 20 with Patty Loew and the Strawberry Moon Singers. Please come if you can – both evenings should be exceptional.